The Amazing Race UpdateBrief glimpse of the Hagia Sophia from the taxis. Here's what it looks like:
Years ago my mother sent me a postcard from Istanbul with a spectacular picture of this amazing building. What you can't get a feel for in the picture above is the scale; it's an immense structure. Constructed almost 1500 years ago, it served for 900 years as a Byzantine church, and 500 years
after that as a Mosque.
Quick bit of the whirling dervishes (Rob and Ambuh are obviously unimpressed) and then it's off to London. Rob & Ambuh and Ron & Kelly make up for missing the earlier flight to Istanbul last week by flying through Frankfurt and then to Jolly Olde. Uchenna & Joyce make the classic reality-game mistake of assuming they've done good enough. How ironic is it that the team that got ahead by digging harder last week settles back this week?
As a result the singles get almost a 90-minute head start on the married couples. The first task was to find the zebra crossing where the photo for the cover of Abbey Road was taken. From there they have to go to a giant Ferris wheel on the Thames, and locate a flag from up in the air. This part was a little repetitive as no couple took more than one rotation of the wheel to locate the flag.
Next comes the detour. I would have been absolutely furious had I missed out on doing the Sherlock Holmes task (but of course I would take brains over brawn any day). Notice as well that neither of the single couples knew about 221b Baker Street. DOH! That should cost them more than just a few seconds to ask a passerby; where's the "brains" in that?
Uchenna & Joyce showed their class during the boat task when Uchenna offered to help Meredith & Gretchen. Of course, this was against the rules, but it was a nice gesture.
Next comes the roadblock, but first Rob & Ambuh force the POW & the Beauty Queen to yield. We learn afterwards that Ron used to fly a $30 million helicopter, but for some reason Kelly opts to do the roadblock task, which is to guide a London Double-Decker bus through an obstacle course. Rob has already completed his run by the time they get there. Nobody gets through it the first few times and for a brief while all the teams except the Survivor duo are on the course. Uchenna also bizarrely elects to allow Joyce to drive, but at least the retirees are sensible and have Meredith take the wheel. After all what would the producers do without the shots of Gretchen shaking her head in disgust and disappointment?
We'll find out next week, as Team Auldephart finally bit the dust tonight. Rob & Ambuh won and sickeningly, there was a reward for winning the race. Arrgghhhh! Those two are the best argument for the Death Tax yet; talk about undeserved wealth!
Next Week: Grand Finale!
Viking Pundit has
his recap prepared, as has
Kris of Dummocrats. One of the commenters at Kris' blog makes an interesting point. Ambuh wanted to Yield Uchenna and Joyce, which probably would have been smarter. Rob & she ended up completing the rest of the tasks just a little faster than Ron & Kelly, so they really didn't gain their first-place finish tonight because of the Yield. And inevitably there will be a transportation bottleneck next week that results in all the teams being effectively tied, so they gained nothing by Yielding the POW & the Beauty Queen. Had they forced Team Africa to yield for an hour it would probably have meant that the old couple would have finished third, making Team Survivor's competition in the final that much weaker.
